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In this article, a method for manufacturing of heart models is presented. These models are created from CT or MRI data and are patient specific. They are applied to surgical planning in cardiac surgery to obtain more information of the anatomical structure. The models were produced using a 3d printing technology based on starch, allowing highlighting different sections of the model by colors and creation of flexible models, which can be handled easily. In addition, the motion of the heart was coarsely simulated with such a model.

This method can be applied in navigation of instruments in open liver surgery to track the position of the liver.

In clinical routine of liver surgery there are a multitude of risks such as vessel injuries, blood loss, incomplete tumor resection, etc. In order to avoid these risks the surgeons perform a planning of a surgical intervention. A good graphical representation of the liver and its inner structures is of great importance for a good planning. In this work we introduce a new planning system for liver surgery, which is meant for computer tomography (CT) data analysis and graphical representation. The system is based on automatic and semiautomatic segmentation techniques as well as on a simple and intuitive user interface and was developed with the intention to help surgeons by planning an operation and increasing the efficiency in open liver surgery.

The use of a suitable navigation system improves safety and effectiveness in liver surgery for intraoperative localization of key structures such as tumors. However, resecting hepatic tumors with appropriate safety margin demands for further enhancements concerning the proposed methods.

A formerly developed ultrasound liver phantom for testing of surgical navigation systems and liver resection trainings was evaluated experimentally. The phantom was scanned with CT and the dataset was analyzed with existing segmentation techniques. A virtual 3D model was generated on the basis of the segmentation; it was later used for phantom registration in a surgical assistance navigation system. Within an experiment, ten test persons have tried to touch three tumor models hidden in the phantom with the tip of a resection instrument. In 67% of overall 30 touch trials it was a successful touch at the first go. It means that the developed liver phantom is appropriate for testing of surgical navigation systems, as well as for computer assisted liver resection trainings.